The Palaces Of Genova (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Palaces Of Genova

But the Middle Ages, the heroic period of the sea-port city, lives in the form of its houses as well as in the well-known customs of its citizens, who in that period lived under the government of one sole law, for centuries unchanged. The antique fathers, merchants and corsairs, thrifty and audacious, who in the name of Mary, most holy Patron, and San Zorzo the valiant, accumulated riches in their iron chests and munitions in the arsenal, through the penury of level ground built their houses close together. They were separated by dark streets, those dark carrügi, which God looked after, for when it rained, the city remained clean as though it had been pur pose washed and which in time of war were easily barricaded and sown with ambuscades, while from the great towers sure ruin could be hurled down on whoever dared advance. In those carrügz', so narrow that Heine in exaggerative vein wrote that the Genoese, sitting on the thresholds of their houses have to face inward in order not to touch with their knees the inhabitants of the houses op posite, lived men of whom half the world was tal king and captains who were the terror of the sea. The broad streets are the inheritance of modern times and of a softer and more sumptuous life, but the glory and fortune of Genoa was laid in those same narrow streets from whence came forth Chri stopher Columbus and Lamba d' Oria. And ‚the houses with their steep walls, lacking grace and or nament, by their solemn aspect and disdain of all exterior adornment, are the true offspring of that watchful prudence which was responsible for the utilitarian topography. Wood was used until a lateperiod, and the houses were even constructed de tachable, so that one who did not own land and only rented it, could, at the expiration of his lease, walk off with his house like the snail. This will surprise anyone who knows the old proverb about Genoa: sea withoul fish, mountains wii/q Ines, and which finishes with a silly insult to Ge noese women. But it was not always so. There were thick chestnut woods around Genoa up till the end of the seventeenth century. The first cutting down commenced for the war of 1746-and went on in spite of the penalties, corporal punishment of whip ping, and even the galley from two to five years, to such an extent that there was no longer wood to burn in the vast fireplaces. And Giammaria Pic cone, who in 1796 published a book sustaining the necessity and possibility of rewooding the mountains, seemed to be still under the impression of the pre ceding winter's cold.

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